FBI Lawyers Threaten Bureau Critic for Using Official Seal on His Book Cover
You'd think that the nation's number one domestic counterterrorism agency would have better things to do than yap at authors and publishers about using the bureau's official seal on their books.
But I.C. Smith, a retired senior FBI counterintelligence agent who wrote a very critical book about the bureau in 2004, just found out otherwise.
A few weeks ago an FBI lawyer instructed Smith that he had to remove the FBI seal from his Web site, including one on the jacket of his 2004 book, "INSIDE: A Top G Man Exposes Spies, Lies and Bureaucratic Bungling Inside the FBI."
The G-lawyer also told Smith that the publisher of his book, Thomas Nelson, Inc., would also be instructed "that if the book is reprinted, the cover be redesigned to remove the FBI Seal."
The legal beagle cited U.S. laws banning the use of government badges and seals for criminal or commercial purposes.
That's ridiculous, Smith thought. The regulations were designed to prevent burglar alarm companies from using the FBI seal as an implied endorsement, not to hamstring authors and publishers.
The veteran counterspy, who'd had an illustrious career tracking East German and Chinese secret agents, thought he had been singled out.
"At no time was I ever told by anyone from the FBI, during my 25 years of employment or during the rather tortuous pre-publication review process, that the use of the FBI seal for such purposes, is against some federal statue," he responded to FBI assistant general counsel Clyde Villemez, according to e-mails obtained independently by SpyTalk.
"I wonder ... if your contacting me is due to the fact that I have, on occasion, been critical of the FBI and, if I had always said glowing things about the FBI, if you would have gone after me?" Smith wrote.
"I suspect you would not. I have no doubt you are taking the stance you have taken, not because of what I did, but because of who I am."
Smith also wondered whether bureau lawyers were spending the day sending threatening letters to the street vendors and novelty shops hawking hats, tee shirts and coffee mugs with the FBI logo within sight of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
Smith, who helped uncover Larry Wu-tai Chin, a longtime Chinese mole inside the CIA, told me he had done a cursory search of the Internet and "easily found well in excess of 25 books, including a number by retired FBI agents" with the bureau seal on their cover.
So I took a sample myself, calling two authors of books generally favorable to the FBI, one an ex-agent, the other a journalist with close connections in U.S. intelligence.
They, too, had been contacted by the bureau's gumshoe lawyers, it turned out.
Mark Olshaker, who co-authored the best-selling "Mindhunter" series with former FBI behavioral specialist John E. Douglas, remembered one book in the series, Broken Wings, having the seal on the jacket.
"It's still on there," Olshaker said. But if push had come to shove, he said, "I don't think there's basically a whole lot they could've done about it."
That's what Ronald Kessler thought, too. He basically told the FBI to get lost.
A prolific author of books on U.S. intelligence, including two on the FBI that prominently display its seal on their jackets, Kessler called the bureau's legal threats a "ridiculous" waste of time.
Kessler responded to the FBI's order to remove the logos from his books with a letter lecturing its lawyers on the difference between books that use the FBI seal to clue readers to what a book is about, versus a commercial venture that would use it to imply the bureau's approval of its product or service, like a blood lab.
Books are protected from government censure by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he reminded them.
"I did not have to ask for permission -- anymore than Newsweek, The Washington Post, or NBC News have to do so" when they use the FBI seal on stories, he said.
"Three of my books have used the FBI seal on the jacket. In the case of the first book, 'Spy vs. Spy,' the FBI gave me the seal, and I never heard anything about asking for permission to use it. In the case of the two most recent books, 'The FBI' and 'The Bureau,' the FBI asked me to seek the bureau's permission to use the seal on the jackets.
"In both cases, I told them that I believe the intent of the law in question is to appropriately prevent a commercial firm like an alarm or detective agency from using the seal or the initials 'FBI' from giving the impression its activity is authorized by the FBI," Kessler continued, "but use of the seal on any journalistic work is an entirely different matter: that its use in such a case is protected by the First Amendment, and the seal may be reproduced in a journalistic endeavor like any other government document."
"They backed off," said Kessler, who has also authored books on the CIA, the White House and, coming this summer, the Secret Service -- without time-wasting letters from legal bureaucrats in the alphabet agencies.
Lawyers, it might be added, who don't know the difference between a book jacket and Lo-Jack.
I.C. Smith would rather have the FBI just back off, too.
But it's a big bureaucracy where, as they say, the wheels of justice grind slowly.
"The law is very clear," an FBI spokesman said yesterday, "and has been in existence for many years."
Original article here.